Psychometrics and Kink: The Kink Perspectives Project
If you’ve ever wondered whether or not you’re kinky, or what kink role best fits you, you likely have taken one of the many BDSM quizzes that claims to tell you these things. But what if you wanted a more nuanced look into your own proclivities and what drives them?
Enter Books, a kink educator and munch organiser who has a fascination with human behaviour, specifically in terms of how humans learn and develop.
Books has a PhD in adult learning and measurement science. He enjoys working with methods that try to give people information about themselves while also capturing many of the complexities inherent in the human experience. When he’s not reading, hanging out with his wife, or playing board games, Books is working on his latest endeavour, the Kink Perspectives Inventory (KPI).
According to the Kink Perspectives website,
The purpose of the project is to offer a different way to look at why people participate in kink activities. Instead of relying on the role-based approach that most inventories use to approach the question of identification in kink spaces, instead, it relies on qualitatively-generated and CFA-backed categories of reasons that people engage in kink activities. This approach is married with an educational twist that shows the user what activities those with similar profiles to theirs have enjoyed in kink spaces, thus allowing users to discover new resources, communities, and interests.
After the Kynk 101 team had an opportunity to take the survey and see our own results, we wanted to know more about the kinkster behind this unique project.
Kynk 101: How did you come up with the Kink Perspectives Project?
Books: The Kink Perspectives Project comes out of a few things. First, my own teaching in the kink community and my experiences hosting munches with my wife. We noticed new people very quickly gravitated towards one or two things, usually due to convenience (“there’s a class on rope, so I got interested in rope, and there wasn’t a class on fire, so I didn’t get interested in fire”) or proximity to others (“the munch host I met at my first munch was into rope, so they got me into rope as well”). That’s pretty natural human behaviour, because when we enter a new group, we want to quickly find a place for ourselves.
“The KPI is, at its heart, a developmental tool. It’s a way to try and broaden views and perspectives about kink.”
However, that tendency to try to “fit in” and find a place, or meet a partner, or not embarrass ourselves, can really work against our own development. So the KPI is, at its heart, a developmental tool. It's a way to try and broaden views and perspectives about kink.
Another factor that contributed to the way the project is designed was my dissatisfaction with what was available as learning materials on the internet. There are a lot of really great resources, but when someone is new to the community, is it extremely difficult to tell a good resource from a poor one. Much of what is portrayed on the internet, particularly the professional work, is a far cry from what is safe and available to novice players.
Given the pandemic and the increased interest in kink activities, at the same time the dearth of events caused by the lack of in-person munches and classes, web resources have gained outsized importance. So I wanted to contribute a resource that I knew was widely available by being on the web and free-to-use, but also of high quality and backed by solid methods.
Finally, there’s my own personal curiosity. I’ve been in and around the community for quite awhile and I’m always interested in the ‘why’ of kink. And one of the things I realised quite early, and have been reassured of over many years, is that a lot of people don't have simple or straightforward reasons why they participate in kink activities.
So I’ve heard a lot of really fascinating reasons, and I wanted to explore some of those mathematically.
Kynk 101: Have you taught any classes or created other projects that connect kink and psychometrics?
Books: I do try and make data a portion of almost any class I teach or presentation I give, but this is only my second foray into connecting original psychometrics with kink. The first one was about trying to understand “Primal,” because it is very difficult to define and have high overlap with a number of other kinks, but some of those other kinks are nearly orthogonal (by which I mean, they don’t play well with each other). You don’t see a lot of Viking-Petplayers, for example, but you see Primals who engage with both Viking and Primals who engage in Petplay. (I write this and I know I’m about to get inundated with protests from all of the Viking+Petplayers, but hey, that’s the complexity of human experience, and that’s why it is interesting!). At some point, I’ll go ahead and make that instrument public, and link it at the bottom of the KPI page. Maybe start a section on “other instruments” or something similar.
Kynk 101: It’s funny you use that example. DiavalDiablo, one of our founders, actually knows a Viking Petplayer.
Books: Ha! Well, that is awesome.
Kynk 101: The "nerd stuff" of your website mentions use of things like the Graded Response Model (GRM) and factor analysis techniques for developing the scale you use in the KPI tool. Can you explain in layman's terms how these tools are applied to the KPI and why they're important for its construction and results?
Books: So there’s a couple things to unpack here, and a little bit of background science necessary to unpack it.
First, a core tenet of measurement science is that there are things we can observe, and things we cannot observe, but we can infer from the observable behaviours. We call those unobservable things “latent traits” and they usually exist as a continuum.
This is an imaginary distance between two infinite points, ranging between two theoretical but unachievable absolutes. That’s a bit of a mouthful, so here’s an example of how to make one.
Draw a line on a paper. On one end, label it ‘worst speller ever’, and on the other end, label it ‘spelling bee champion.’ Then put a dot where you think your ability is. That line is a latent trait continuum, and you’ve just completed a test to estimate your ability. It may not be the most accurate test ever, but that’s what the math is for… increasing accuracy and minimising error. Essentially, psychometrics is the research about making tests that estimate latent traits as accurately as possible.
This explanation begs an important question: If we can’t observe these “latent traits,” how do we know they actually exist?
“The KPI is trying to understand the underlying factors (I’m calling them “perspectives”) into why people engage in kink activities. So a rigger, a kink photographer, and a costumed roleplayer might be engaging in kink activities for the same reason: they like the way it looks. ”
That’s the second big concept, and it is called a dimensionality analysis or a factor structure (there's a slight nuance between those terms, but it is unimportant for this explanation). Let’s say I gave you a test of random knowledge… just pulled a bunch of questions off Trivial Pursuit cards and made them into a test. What factors might influence your answers?
Well, your age, the amount of education you’ve had, how many books you’ve read or how much CNN you’ve watched, etc. A lot of those will be unimportant, but there will be a few of them that account for a lot of variability in whether someone gets a high score or a low score on the test. What we do then is look mathematically at where those factors are coming from (what questions contribute to which factor), and try to label them as accurately as we can.
The KPI is trying to understand the underlying factors (I’m calling them “perspectives”) into why people engage in kink activities. So a rigger, a kink photographer, and a costumed roleplayer might be engaging in kink activities for the same reason: they like the way it looks. A psychometrician will find that common link, observe the behaviours that contribute to it, and give it a name: in this case, I’ve named that idea the Artistic/Expressive perspective.
So instead of having three people identify with roles that don’t seem to have much in common, instead, we can talk about the common ground between people, who are all engaging in kink activities for this similar reason. And those people may all be able to try out other activities that they never thought of trying before, because they share that common ground. That’s the purpose of the Project.
It’s also really important to talk about the limits of roles, rules, and labels. Humans are very complex. Human behaviour is even more complex. It is very rare to be able to define something as a binary (Yes-this, which automatically means No-that).
Searching for binaries when they don’t exist is actually a logical fallacy, and we commit it often. Are we an introvert or an extrovert? The truth is, we’re neither. Nobody is a perfect introvert or perfect extrovert. We fit somewhere on a continuum between introvert and extrovert. So the math fights against the binary fallacy.
In the kink community, the binary fallacy often happens when we discuss “roles.” Are you a rigger? Choose yes or no. Do you like impact? Choose yes or no. Are you a sub? Choose yes or no. Those aren’t particularly good questions, because they inherently state that our reality is binary. And it is not, the reality of human behaviour is much more complex than that. So these models allow me to capture a lot of the complexity of human experience and preferences, while still giving enough reduction that results are still useful to the participant.
Kynk 101: Currently the KPI isn't anonymous (contact information, either via FetLife or email is required). Do you foresee creating a version that will provide results for someone anonymously?
Books: Absolutely! This is mostly a technical limitation at the moment. My goal is to have the results tabulate and the recommendations appear as soon as you submit your answers, but my knowledge of how to do the math far exceeds my knowledge of how to program a website to do the math.
Then, of course, the website has to create the visual displays and pull the qualitative responses and advice. When I get that figured out or recruit a web designer, being able to take the inventory anonymously and receive results instantly is absolutely the goal.
“One thing I really hope to see emerge from this, and has emerged in my local community, is cross-talk between people who would not usually interact because they define themselves by different roles.”
Kynk 101: What advice do you have for how a person can approach applying their KPI results to their existing kinky lifestyle?
Books: The KPI is really a chance to reflect on the underlying perspectives behind why you enjoy kink. To quote Morpheus from the good Matrix movie: “Free Your Mind.” It’s a guided opportunity to take a step back from the exciting things like scenes and toys and relationships, and reflect on the underlying threads between those things that you really enjoy. Then, to potentially learn about some other things that people with similar profiles to you enjoy, that you may not have tried yet.
One thing I really hope to see emerge from this, and has emerged in my local community, is cross-talk between people who would not usually interact because they define themselves by different roles. It’s great to see people building common ground in the community, and I hope the KPI facilitates that in fun, interesting, exciting, and kinky ways for people.
Kynk 101: It's our understanding that the KPI tool is still in its pilot stages. As it continues to evolve, how often would you advise that participants re-take it? Do you have a timeline for when it will be finalised?
Books: There are a few major milestones at which different things become mathematically possible. There’s a boring explanation here about cell size and acceptable variance, but basically, I expect to be able to do the first major update after about 200 participants, and a “mostly final” update after about 800 participants.
I expect to be able to push the first major update by the end of the calendar year, so that’s when I’d suggest people take the instrument again. I’ll be sure to make it really clear on the website when there has been a major update to the instrument.
Kynk 101: Is there anything else you'd like to share about this project?
Books: It is important to discuss what the project does not do, and that is to try and unlock every possible fetish or scene that a person might be interested in. There are a lot of unknowns that go into any scene: for example, a huge factor is the energy/compatibility between different participants.
There are a few items in the inventory that address that, but even the perfect combination of interest, fetish, and equipment can result in a bad scene if the energy between participants is wrong. So that’s really something to be aware of.
It’s also important to look at the KPI as a non-judgmental instrument, and I think that is a foundation of a healthy kink community. There is somebody out there who thinks every single thing we engage in, as kinksters, is immoral, wrong, or a poor choice. I find it extremely important not to put a judgmental lens on a project that is about exploring new perspectives.
I’d also like to thank my local Mid-Michigan Community for being willing test subjects (there may have been a few dozen “I volunteer as tribute” jokes), and thank SubtleShadow and the rest of the team at Kynk101 for featuring my work. If anyone has any questions, I’m always happy to receive direct messages on FetLife (@Books_)
Kynk 101 thanks Books for taking the time to speak with us and we applaud his continued exploration of the ‘why’ in kink. If you’d like to know more about the project, or take the KPI, you can do so on the KPI website.
